Summary

Chapter 33, “A Home for Every Departed Thing.” Chula’s narration begins this chapter with musings on how she seems to have forgotten Papa’s voice, and then continues with the story of Papa’s return – how she and Mama and Cassandra find his name on the list of released prisoners, how arrangements are made to bring him home, and how when he arrives, Mama and Cassandra accept him immediately, but she (Chula) cannot, finding too many things different about him. She becomes convinced that he is an imposter, a former confidant or cell mate of Papa’s who learned his family’s secrets in order to take his place and claim a new life in America. She attributes all of Papa’s new habits – how he sleeps curled up against a wall, how he cooks in ways he never did, how he absent-mindedly...